Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI developers can't control their own tech, new lawsuit alleges

A coalition of nonprofit groups sued five major artificial intelligence developers on Thursday in a bid to block their development of AI models, alleging the companies knowingly created technology that poses catastrophic risks to humanity.

The lawsuit — filed in San Francisco Superior Court by the Alliance for Secure AI, alongside advocacy groups Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen and the Heat Initiative — named Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceXSI (SpaceX Super Intelligence). 

"For years, the executives building these systems have warned us that their own frontier models pose catastrophic risks," Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, said in a statement. 

"Yet they keep racing to develop and market increasingly powerful AI that they admit they cannot reliably control, and are now handing over AI research and development to AI itself," he added.

The tech companies targeted in the suit did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The litigation comes amid broader concerns about AI safety, sparked by several publicly reported incidents in which AI agents went rogue and carried out unauthorized actions.

The nonprofit groups contend that AI companies are developing technology they have admitted they can't control. The risk could grow as the companies rely more on their own AI models to develop future platforms without human intervention, a concept known as "recursive self-improvement," according to the suit.